


Seven Beginnings

by Sheeana



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara Lance makes and remakes herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themuslimbarbie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themuslimbarbie/gifts).



> This doesn't take into account the Legends of Tomorrow trailer, so I guess it's some kind of canon-divergent AU that takes place after the end of season 3. I hope you enjoy it!

**-1-**

When Sara Lance is nineteen years old, Oliver Queen is funny and hot and so very, very unattainable.

She watches him at parties she begs to be invited to until Laurel gives in. She meets his eyes while he's laughing at some joke Laurel's just made, or smiling politely but winking at her when no one else is watching. When Laurel isn't watching.

Laurel. Perfect Laurel who gets good grades, who got into a good school, who wants to be a lawyer, whose boyfriend is a billionaire. Laurel, her flawless sister who she loves desperately but sometimes can't stand at all.

When Oliver invites her to come on a trip with him, she walks onto the boat and thinks she doesn't have any regrets.

**-2-**

When Sara Lance is twenty years old, Oliver Queen is _alive_. He's bruised and scarred and there's something wrong with his eyes, like they've gone cold and dead in a way that can't ever be fixed, but he's not lying at the bottom of the ocean, and that's something. These days, she'll take something. Any scrap of hope she can get.

She remembers him the way he was before, but it's distant, as if from another lifetime that belonged to someone else. Someone who isn't her. Laughing drunkenly. Hugging her for a moment too long when he says goodbye. Begging her to stay when she knew she should go. She doesn't think about Laurel, doesn't let herself even _go there_ , because it's still too raw even while everything else has gone numb. She can't handle the kind of guilt she knows she deserves to feel. It would kill her faster than the island ever could. So she doesn't think about it. She loses herself in the urgency, the fear, the desperate attempt to get off the island.

There's Ivo. There's a gun. There's an ugly truth.

She can't do it. Oliver doesn't flinch.

**-3-**

She covers her face before she kills a target. Not because she believes in the League's teachings, not because she thinks that what she does is an act of holy retribution, but because it makes her feel faceless, anonymous.

Once, twice, she thinks it's strange that her fingers are so sure when they guide a knife to a throat. Then she makes herself forget.

**-4-**

The last thing she knows is a familiar pair of eyes, someone she knows, someone she _trusts_. Then there's burning hot pain and she's stumbling, tripping, falling.

Then nothing.

Then light, and fire, and agony, and a soothing voice in her ear, bringing her back, calling her home.

**-5-**

The next time Sara sees Oliver, he's got his back to the wall and his mask up. It looks like he ran out of arrows awhile back, and now he's fighting desperately for his life with nothing but his hands and a bow.

She doesn't hesitate.

She hasn't seen him in two years. He's had more training, learned a new style. It's familiar, a deadly dance she learned in the darkest place she's ever been, and it doesn't belong here. It doesn't matter. He's still exactly where she needs him to be, exactly when she needs him to be there. It's like they've practiced. Like their bodies can't forget.

When it's over, three people are lying unconscious on the ground (but _alive_ , she thinks, and the only feeling the thought elicits is relief) and Oliver is standing right in front of her, staring at her. Like he's seen a ghost. Her lips start to curve into a tired but faintly amused smile. It's a thought she's had more than once, but she's not a ghost. There's no word for someone who comes back from the dead three times.

"Sara," he says, like he needs to name her before he can believe it. "How long have you been-" He nods at her. 

"Awhile," is all she says.

Then there's nothing stopping her from stumbling into his arms, or him from stumbling into hers. She doesn't know which way it goes, just that suddenly his fingers are gripping her jacket over the back of her shoulder. For a long time that's all they do. All they are. Two bodies in a dirty, narrow alley in Starling City. Two lost souls.

She notices he's injured when she shifts her weight against him and he hisses out a quiet, pained groan.

"Sit," she says, and nods at the low wall at the edge of the roof.

He obeys, but he moves slowly. She kneels down in front of him to take a look at the gash she can see through his pants.

"Not bad," she says, after she peels back the fabric enough to evaluate it. "Come back to my place and I'll get it patched up."

"Are we going to talk about this?" he asks calmly.

She snorts. "About me? Is that what you want, Ollie?"

"Do you want to tell me?" he counters. His fingers run down his bow, as if he's just trying to find something to do with them, something to distract himself.

"There's not much to say. They brought me back. I got away. You killed Ra's. I had some things to take care of before I could come back. That's the end of that story."

"That's all you're going to say." He eyes her evenly, not quite judging, not yet.

"Do you want to talk about what happened with Malcolm Merlyn and the League?" she replies. "Or how about how my sister ended up wearing my Canary suit. Because if we're going to talk, I have questions too-"

"I get it," Oliver says, holding up a hand in surrender. He gets back to his feet when she offers her his hand, testing his weight against his injured leg. "You're right. The last two years have been..." He exhales hard and doesn't finish.

"Better," she says. "They've been better. Than what came before."

He laughs. It's not as bitter as she expects. "That's not saying much, Sara."

"Yeah, it is," she says. She looks down at her hands, at the old scars and the new. More old than new. She's had more chances than she ever had any right to.

"And now you're...?" He tries to sound disinterested, but she knows him. They survived together. He can hide from everyone else - for awhile at least - but he can't ever hide from her.

"Here to stay," she says firmly.

His lips are brushing hers before her breath really dies in her throat. She's long past hesitating, long past needing a moment to react. Her hand comes up to grip his shoulder and then the back of his neck. His arm comes up to steady himself against the wall. They don't break apart. They don't say another word for a long time after that. They don't need to.

Later, after she's bandaged his leg and he's looked at her long enough to decide that she's real, his hands are warm on her skin, his fingertips rough against her scars, hers rough against his, and all she can think is that she feels _clean_.

**-6-**

It takes her three days to work up the courage to visit the person she needs to see the most. When she finds herself standing in front of Laurel's door, she can't really remember getting there. Then the door's opening, and her heart's beating too fast. She takes a breath, opens her mouth to explain, and-

"No," Laurel says sharply. " _No._ Don't- don't- no." She brings her hand to her mouth, presses the back of it against it, and for a second Sara thinks that she's either about to cry or about to tell her to leave. "... Inside," Laurel snaps finally. She holds the door open just enough to let Sara duck under her arm.

She comes inside, stands and waits in Laurel's living room while Laurel paces back and forth. For the first time, she _wishes_ she could go back to Nanda Parbat. It was easier facing Ra's al Ghul's disappointment and wrath than Laurel's.

For a long time Laurel doesn't say anything. Finally she stops, turns around, and walks back until she's standing right in front of her. "You died, Sara. I saw you die. I held you in my arms and you- you weren't- you weren't _breathing_ \- so tell me. Tell me how you're standing here right now, because I can't understand."

"There's… things you don't know," Sara says cautiously. That's putting it lightly, but no matter what Laurel does with her evenings now, there are still some things that are too dangerous for her. Some things that are best kept buried.

Laurel gestures at her. "How long-" She doesn't even make it as far as Oliver did. Her hand comes back to her mouth, holding back a quiet gasp.

"Since a few days after Thea shot me. Laurel, I had to. There were things I had to do. I wanted to come back. I wanted to tell you, I just... I couldn't." She's already pleading, already begging for forgiveness that she's never deserved, that Laurel shouldn't have given her even once.

"You could have told me! I'm your sister. You should have _trusted_ me."

"Laurel-"

"No," Laurel says, holding up her hand. She takes a deep breath. "No. Don't. Because if you do, I'll get mad, and Sara-"

"Yes?" Whatever it is, whatever she says, Sara deserves it. There are no punishments that can ever make up for taking everything from someone, giving half of it back, and taking it away again. Five years in hell doesn't even begin to cut it. She's ready to apologize, to leave, to fall on her proverbial knife (maybe even a literal one, if that's what Laurel wants), whatever she needs to do. Whatever it takes to give Laurel any measure of peace again.

"I don't want to be mad at you," says Laurel, instead of anything that corresponds with what Sara imagined. There are tears shining in her eyes and barely suppressed in her voice. 

"Laurel-" She chokes. For a moment she's not sure if she can do this.

"No." Laurel's arms are around her before she can say another word, before she can take another breath or think another thought. "Don't say you're sorry. Don't say anything. I'm just- so glad-" The rest is lost as Laurel starts to cry.

They hold each other, her chin on Laurel's shoulder, their arms wrapped tightly around each other, their hearts beating together. Sara wonders about a life where Laurel never let her go in the first place, where she never got on that boat. Then she dismisses it because it's not real, and she doesn't need that kind of fantasy anymore. She has everything she needs now, right in front of her.

"I do trust you," she says finally. "I've always trusted you. It's like you said. You're my big sister." The smile that tugs on her lips is so real that it makes her chest hurt a little bit.

Laurel laughs, but it's still shakier than normal. She wipes her cheeks with both her hands. "I could use some help from my little sister, though. Some tips? If…"

"If?"

"If you're... not going anywhere again. If you can stay."

"Yeah," Sara says fervently, echoing what she told Oliver. She thinks she's finally making a promise she can keep. Maybe the first one she's ever kept. "Yeah, I'm not going anywhere."

Maybe it's the worst idea she's ever had, but she lets Laurel come with her out into the streets that night. Laurel's still a little inexperienced and clumsy, trained and tested far away from the kind of world that forged Sara into what she is now - but she's good, better than Sara expected. When they walk right into a robbery that's about to happen, she watches Laurel out of the corner of her eye and reads her history in the way she moves. There's a bit of Nyssa there, in the way Laurel's learned to make her movements so smooth, so careful. A bit of Oliver, in the way she grips her staff. A bit of something else, in the way her feet never stay still. Something that reminds her of a boxing match.

"Not bad," she calls out, after she takes out four of the six would-be thieves herself. Then she's pinned, struggling against someone who weighs a lot more than her, and all of a sudden she could use her big sister. "Hey, Laurel-"

"I know! A little occupied here at the moment-"

"It's just that I _really_ need you to-"

"I said I _know_ , Sara." There's a cracking sound over the annoyance in Laurel's tone. The guy goes down. Laurel is standing over him, panting and gripping her staff a little too tight – but then she's grinning.

Sara can't help smiling right back, laughing out of sheer exhilaration and relief. She wipes the sweat from her brow and slides her batons into their holsters on her hips. "Remember that place Dad always used to take us, after your dance lessons when we were little kids?" 

"That old diner?" Laurel raises her eyebrows.

"Is it still around?"

"It might not be everything you remember."

"For old times' sake?"

"Why not? But-"

"But?"

" _Maybe_ we should get changed first. I'm not sure Starling's ready for two Canaries yet."

They bump up against each other accidentally-on-purpose as they walk, laughing and recounting stories that Sara thought she'd forgotten, thought she'd buried or burned a long time ago. Somehow they're still there, hiding in places the darkness never touched.

**-7-**

One week later, she meets Oliver on the roof of a low building at the edge of the Glades. He's already sitting on a ledge when she finds and joins him.

They're different now. The weights on their shoulders are heavier, but also lighter. The cold emptiness isn't gone from his eyes - she doesn't think it will ever be gone - but it's muted with time, tempered with change.

As she sits beside him, her finger idly traces over the map of scars on his back. They're obscured by his jacket, but she doesn't need to see them to know where they are.

"Do you ever think about the day we got on the boat?" he asks, turning to look at her over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, not so much anymore. I got over it," she says dryly. "Why?"

"Because sometimes… I feel like Oliver Queen died. Like someone else came back from the island." He's right. He still wears that hood. She's still all in black. But they're not the childish idiots who got onto that boat. He's not the ruthless man he became on the island. He's not what Ra's tried to turn him into - but neither is she. She's not a faceless killer. She's not even the woman who came back to Starling City. Whatever they are now, it's something new.

"No," she says, with a kind of finality, like closing a door behind them both. "We were those people. They were us." 

He doesn't answer. His eyes are distant, thoughtful. His fingers find hers, grip them loosely, without urgency.

"I don't have anymore regrets," she says. There should be more to that thought, but his thumb is suddenly brushing her cheek.

"I do. I hurt the people I love in a way that I can't ever fix. People are dead because of me. But Sara, you are not one of my regrets. I can't say what kind of person that makes me, but I also can't tell you that I don't want you at my side."

"You know what? We're _good_ people, Ollie. That's who we are now." She gets to her feet, vaults easily over the ledge and into the street below. Her hands go to her hips to unsheathe her batons. She glances back just long enough to see that he's fighting a smile when he follows.


End file.
